Manitou Point Preserve Trail

Manitou Point Preserve Trail is a 3 mile heavily trafficked loop trail located near Garrison, New York that features a river and is good for all skill levels. The trail offers a number of activity options and is best used from March until October. Dogs are also able to use this trail.

We parked at the trail head that the app lead us to, just off the Bear Mountain Highway, on Mystery Point Road.

When we reviewed the map posted there we were initially confused because we were looking for the "Manitou Point Preserve Trail" as named within the app. Instead, there are several different trails listed, none of which was the 3 miles as described within the app. We figured out that all of these trails were part of the larger named hike and set off to find the specific trail that was to lead us to the banks of the Hudson River (you want the River Trail in Blue).

We walked about ten minutes through the woods and came to another clearing and dirt road. You can follow this road straight down and around (we did this on way back), or the blue trail does cut through the woods to get you into this road further down. We back-tracked into the woods to find it. Nice walk past a small waterfall here once you're back on the dirt road.

Then, you are left with two choices as the dirt road goes either further downhill, or a bit uphill over the train tracks and past a private residence (through open gates). If you're trying to get to the river, you want to find the blue trail markings just past the bridge on the left side. BUT it is too overgrown to pass through, we had to turn back.

We were getting pretty frustrated at this point, so we just backed out and walked up through the gates to take in the view, which took us down to the river bank anyway.

We walked all the way down to the water and discovered the river trail to the left! We picked it back up, and enjoyed an awesome walk along the trail high above the river. We only realized once we got to a little gate that this portion of our hike was on private property--whoops!

We passed through this gate and were officially back on the blue trail. It's awesome, with amazing views, but very high and narrow in spots. We had our 4 year old with us, and our baby on our back, and we were really worried our 4 year old would slip and fall. We were both taking turns clinging to his hand! So I do not recommend this portion of the trail for small kids unless you are wearing them.

We turned around at some point, and came back the way we came.

Overall, a fun hike once we figured out what we were looking for at the trail head map, and once we were able to circumnavigate the overgrown portion of the trail that leads to the river. The apps tracking function really saved us on this one!

Fun hike especially down near the river. On the downside the upper parts were not well marked and there were a lot of ticks. My wife got a tick bite and a couple in the parking lot said they took several ticks off their dog.

Very easy walking trail with nice views. There was hardly any people when we went on a Sunday afternoon but the trail is well maintained, I think because the few people who actually live back there sometimes use the trail as a road.